The VALKYRIES (pronounced VAL-kir-ees) are the Norse Goddesses who choose which warriors will go to Valhalla when they are slain. The name Valkyries means "choosers of the slain", and these beautiful women rode on winged horses to battlefields, where they would choose the bravest of the dead warriors and bring them to join Odin's army in Valhalla. The Valkyries wore armor and carried spears, and their armor gives off a glow that flashes through the northern sky as the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.

Various individual Valkyries are listed in mythology, some with translations of their names:

The name of an Indo-European god of thunder and/or the oak may be reconstructed as *perkunos or *perkunos. Another name for the thunder god contains an onomatopoeic root *tar-, continued in Gaulish Taranis and Hittite Tarhunt. Germanic *Thunraz (Thor) is from a stem *(s)tene- "thunder".